A textile web, whether a woven or knitted cloth or some kind of felt, must be identified immediately after formation and before it is subjected to various further treatment steps so it can be kept track of. The problem with doing so is that the treatments through which the goods are put are quite aggressive. The web is often heated in water to temperatures near boiling for preshrinking and dyeing, and is sometimes steamed and thereby heated with vapor hotter than 100.degree. C. It can be dried in air temperatures as great as 250.degree. C. In addition the goods are invariably soaked thoroughly, and normally in chemically active solutions containing acids, bleach, dyes, surface-active agents such as detergents, and so on. Hence marking goods so the marking remains legible is quite a problem.
Accordingly German patent application 19,975 filed Mar. 26, 1954 by Erwin Menhofer proposes a system where the marking is punched in the selvage. This is done by an array of needles that are pierced through the goods at a marking station provided as far upstream in the production line as possible, and even movable in the production direction to allow the marking to be carried out as the goods move.
The marking produced by such an arrangement is not, even at its best when fresh, highly legible. Furthermore if the material shrinks or is stretched considerably the marking loses even more legibility, thereby further reducing its effectiveness.
Modern procedures for tickets, tokens, and credit cards use markings readable by automatic apparatus. Such systems are described in German patent document 2,338,561 filed by V. Dolch with a claim to the priority of U.S. application Ser. No. 284,753 filed Aug. 30, 1972, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,265,182, and 2,257,021 to P. Hengstler et al. These arrangements use either OCR-type characters and/or numerals, throughgoing holes or perforations, or bumps, arranged is very specifically dimensioned arrays on normally rigid substrates. Unfortunately there has been no such system provided for textile processes, as the goods change shape too much for the marking to remain readable, even though it is known to stiffen textiles by iron-in foils such as described in German Pat. No. 1,635,072 of H. Mayer et al and German patent document 1,435,458 of L. Hartman et al.